A Broad Decentralization at I.B.M.

By DAVID E. SANGER

Published: January 29, 1988

In a sweeping restructuring intended to reverse three years of disappointing performance, the International Business Machines Corporation yesterday created five new, highly autonomous organizations that will be responsible for all of the company's innovation, design and manufacturing.

The moves are intended to greatly decentralize the world's largest computer manufacturer, giving far more responsibility to a younger generation of managers and significantly reducing the role of I.B.M.'s Armonk, N.Y., headquarters in the day-to-day operations of the company. Under the plan, thousands of I.B.M. employees will switch jobs or find themselves working for new managers as part of an effort to put new spark into a company that insiders say is bloated and that customers complain has often not kept up with competition.

''This is a fundamental change in the way we do our business, as significant as any we have ever made,'' John F. Akers, the company's chairman, said yesterday. ''If it works, it will make our employees more entrepreneurial, more accountable and more independent.'' Trend of Decentralization

With yesterday's action, the company that has until recently ranked among the most admired in the world for its management prowess joins a growing list of American corporations that are pushing responsibility for decision-making far down the chain of command. If I.B.M. succeeds, it will likely ratify a management style for huge corporations that calls for an extremely small headquarters staff - so that all but the most critical strategic decisions can be made by the same people who deal with the company's customers.

Presumably, the I.B.M. organization responsible for personal computers could now decide by itself to bring out a new model rather than justifying it to headquarters. But Armonk would retain responsibility for setting overall standards, including seeing that the company's products contain state-of-the-art technology.

But analysts yesterday were doubtful that the restructuring, which comes on the heels of enormous tumult and belt-tightening at I.B.M., will pay off anytime soon. Problem of Linking Systems

I.B.M.'s problems, they maintain, are still rooted in the linking of incompatible computer systems. The company's giant mainframes that are the lifeblood of multinational corporations still cannot communicate smoothly with its mid-range machines and with personal computers that now sit on the desks of millions of white-collar workers. Speeding up the pace of innovation alone, analysts warn, may not ease the confusion among computer users that many blame for I.B.M.'s slower growth. Some, even within I.B.M., fear it could reduce coordination among product managers at a time when products must be more closely linked.

In an hourlong presentation to the press yesterday, Mr. Akers disputed that view. ''We think that the incompatibility among products is kind of yesterday's problem,'' he said. The challenge now, he said, is to drastically cut the time it takes to turn new technologies into new products - a process that I.B.M. employees have long complained gets bogged down in reams of paperwork, endless management reviews and, often, battling among I.B.M. divisions.

Since he became chief executive in 1985, the 53-year-old Mr. Akers, a former fighter pilot with a reputation for independent action, has long complained that too many decisions were made at the top. Yesterday, he said that he had instigated the series of changes I.B.M. is now putting in place. Changes in Top Echelon

As part of the restructuring, Mr. Akers also announced a series of changes in I.B.M.'s top echelons. The post of vice chairman, which had been vacant at the company since the middle of last year, will be shared by two I.B.M. veterans: Kaspar V. Cassani, the former head of I.B.M.'s European operations, and Jack D. Kuehler, an outspoken engineer who has been the driving force behind many of I.B.M.'s most successful mainframes and who has a reputation within the company as one of its harshest internal critics.

Another longtime I.B.M. executive, Terry R. Lautenbach, will take over as general manager of a new entity within the company, called I.B.M. United States. Mr. Lautenbach will be responsible for overseeing virtually all of the company's product development and its domestic marketing arm, two parts of I.B.M. that Mr. Akers has long complained do not operate in sync.

The series of announcements touched off a buzz of activity at I.B.M. offices around the world yesterday, as employees gathered in cafeterias and hallways flipping through reorganization memos that sometimes ran 25 or 30 pages. ''Everybody's spent the day trying to figure out whether tomorrow morning they will be doing something different,'' an executive in Rye Brook, N.Y., said late yesterday afternoon. ''It may be days before we understand exactly what happened.'' Extent of Change Debated

While employees and analysts disagreed about just how extensive the changes will be, Mr. Akers termed them among the more drastic since 1956, when Thomas Watson Jr. took over after the death of his father, I.B.M.'s founder. But one analyst, Stephen C. Dube of Shearson Lehman Brothers Inc., joked, ''One of I.B.M.'s main businesses has always been reorganizing itself.''